Have you had a character make a pivotal change?

Have you ever had a character undergo a drastic change in personality or life goal due to IC events? I have one character who completely switched deity alignment after the fallout of a war. He lost complete faith in the deity he'd grown up under and chose to seek out another god. One who could help him grow powerful enough to protect his family and home in the next calamity.

 

Yep! My main's daughter was killed IC and he became the very worst version of himself for a long time. (OOC years of writing the fallout at this point!) It was really interesting to write out those complicated emotions, especially because it was as the result of an accident with no one to really blame, so no vengeance story arc or other ways to make it "right" IC. Funny how a roll of the dice can change so much!

 

Yes!! I currently play at a Star Trek sim, and my character had to undergo some pretty intense therapy (she survived the Occupation of Bajor), and was really struggling. It was "get help or get out of the Fleet", It's been a fun character building arc.

 

Yes! That's interesting regarding your character and his faith - I play a healer off and on who has a similar backstory. He was part of a war with supernatural elements heavily inspired by the Spanish Civil War, where he was a combat medic who fought paranormal enemies, and his faith and others were folded into government service immediately following the war. He refused further service, was turned in by his order and imprisoned, and converted to serving a little-known goddess of light called the Flickering Flame. He was utterly transformed between the war and his crisis of faith, and became a warm (but quietly troubled) man of peace who loves all living things.

More recently, and not as part of backstory, I have a character who started out as a monster slayer who was cursed for breaking a taboo (killing and eating a unicorn). I meant her to be kind of a heel, and she was a ridiculous and bawdy barbarian. As she made friends and I explored her backstory, she confronted her curse and became a servant of Death, and also mellowed out a TON. It really came down to making friends who didn't immediately judge her, and sat and listened to her instead of dismissing her. That alone was hugely transformative and set up everything that followed.

 

I played a character on an X-Men board over the course of about 10 years; she started out as a young stray kid who got her big opening act doing an urban terrorism. She loses, joins up with the X-Men, has a whole arc where she learns that a cycle of violence isn't going to solve things, and by the end of it all wound up being stumbling into a half-bug-alien mutant hybrid creature anti-hero edgelord arc, and by the time the story was over she had finally found somebody to love. So a bunch of them!